


Four Firsts

by keepingthecloudsaway (rainydayrambling)



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Porn with Feelings, canon compliant through 4x06, what a time to be alive
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-06
Updated: 2019-03-06
Packaged: 2019-11-13 02:50:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18023345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainydayrambling/pseuds/keepingthecloudsaway
Summary: The first first time is a mistake.  Quentin has no problem regarding it that way.  It shouldn't have happened, for a number of reasons, and for a long time, he can't even think about it without a sick curl of guilt unfurling somewhere deep in his body.#A look at four first times over the years.





	Four Firsts

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't set out to write over 4,000 words of porn when I woke up this morning, but here we are! The last scene takes place shortly after 3x05, but there are spoilers for 4x05 in it, so bear that in mind if you're not caught up on the show.
> 
> Essentially this is just four different scenes of porn, some of which is pretty graphic and sappy, some of which is a little less graphic and angsty? What can I say, the heart wants what the heart wants, and today my heart wanted to linger in scenes with Quentin and Eliot, exploring how their tender sweetness with one another would translate to moments of intimacy. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> Comments give me life, and I apologize now if the tense gets wonky, I'll do my best to clean it up.

1.

The first first time is a mistake.  Quentin has no problem regarding it that way.  It shouldn't have happened, for a number of reasons, and for a long time, he can't even think about it without a sick curl of guilt unfurling somewhere deep in his body.  And he deserves it, he knows, deserves to feel ashamed for making bad choices that hurt everyone around him, everyone he loved.

Because they had, hurt everyone.  Alice, Eliot, himself, even Margo.  He didn't like to think about it, but his choice, to sleep with Eliot and Margo, had driven the rift not just between himself and Alice and his friends, but between Margo and Eliot too.

So he can't think of it as a good thing.  It was a mistake -- worse than a mistake.  A disaster, really.  That he knows.

Only, as the months pass, Quentin shifts, his friends shift.  He no longer regards the event itself as the catalyst, but more as a symptom of a larger problem.  That doesn't change its status as one of the worst mistakes Quentin has ever made, for the pain it caused, but does loosen the sickly hold his guilt and shame had on the memories themselves.

And then bits and pieces come back to him, from time to time, and sometimes he lets himself wander down those paths, exploring, adventuring through his own memory to see what he can find.

Margo says she doesn't remember most of it.  Eliot has never mentioned it.

Quentin remembers more, he discovers, than he had thought at first.

He remembers Margo crying.  What Eliot didn't know then and, Quentin is sure, doesn't know now, is that the reason the whole thing had started in the first place was because Quentin and Margo had been talking about him.  Worried about him.  Concerned.  And Margo had cried, which up until then Quentin had never seen her do before.  He had comforted her, because she looked so lost and scared and Margo feeling lost and scared made him feel like, he didn't know -- like he had to be strong for her, he guessed.

And then they had drawn toward each other and Quentin had kissed her, because he sucks.

He knew at the time that he shouldn't do it.  The problem was that he never thought beyond _shouldn't_.

Truthfully, he hadn't thought about Margo or Eliot that way before that night.  Margo was beautiful, of course, he wasn't blind, and Eliot was, well, Eliot was Eliot.  But Quentin had been a little preoccupied with the Beast and Brakebills and Alice.  It wasn't like he'd been pining.  They were his friends, and God, that -- that meant more to him than any of the rest of it, really, especially where things had been so rocky with Julia.

Only that hadn't stopped him.  It hadn't stopped him from kissing Margo, letting her confidence bolster him as he made the decision and didn't look back to question it.

He thinks about that night, with Margo, sometimes.  Her soft hands skimming his shoulders as they leaned up toward each other.  She kissed him hard, with a dedication to the act itself.  And she moved fast, like she couldn't wait to get to the good part.  Well, Quentin -- sometimes this was the good part, for him.  But he knew Margo would laugh at him if he said it, and really, he had been more than happy to follow her lead, so it didn't matter much which direction she was leading him.  She had him out of his clothes in seconds, so that by the time Eliot had woken up and realized, in a dazed sort of way, what was going on, Quentin had nothing but a pair of boxer briefs to disguise the situation.

Quentin has only a short memory of watching Eliot and Margo kiss each other.  Mostly he remembers enjoying the watching almost as much, maybe more, than kissing Margo.  It didn't have the same flavor of _shouldn't_ , not quite, and this Quentin remembers sharply: for a moment, he considered letting that be all.  Sitting back, maybe watching, maybe letting common sense catch up to him and give him the will to get out of there.

He didn't do it because Margo and Eliot didn't kiss each other for long, and then Margo looked up with her devious smile that was somehow sort of sweet at the same time that it was maybe a little evil, and she had held up her hand, and she had waved Quentin over, and somehow, for some reason, that had been enough -- that and Eliot's waiting face, carefully blank, or maybe Quentin only thought it was careful, but in any case, he crawled back over the bed and Margo moved out of the way and Quentin stayed up on his knees but he swung one over Eliot's lap, and he leaned down toward him.

It was easy to do, in the first place, because it was what Margo told him to do, and because he felt safe here, and then it was just easy.

And this, mostly, was what came back to Quentin later.  The slow, hot drag of his lips over Eliot's, Eliot's mouth open and moving up to meet him.  Eliot's hand gripping tight at the back of his neck, the base of his skull, a dramatic contrast to the gentle push of his kiss.  Vague memory of Quentin's own hands shaking, a little, as they traveled over Eliot's body, feeling the fine fabrics of his clothing where Quentin was all skin, which did things to him even now, when he thought about it.

The rest was all flashes: leaning over Margo, kissing her, his hands on her while Eliot stroked him idly; Margo lounging back on the bed and directing him, instructing him, as he knelt on the floor in front of Eliot, carpet digging into his knees, and only a flash of a delicious sort of embarrassment when they all realized, at the same time, that he was drooling a little bit, just at the thought alone, and Margo laughed only kind of in a mean way, but when Quentin looked up at Eliot, his eyes were wide and his mouth was serious, and that gave Quentin the courage to open his own mouth, wet and wanting already, and guide Eliot's cock onto his tongue.

This, mostly, was what Quentin thought about in the months that followed.  With his own hand on himself, and the memory of Eliot hot and hard in his mouth, Margo telling him what to do, what Eliot liked, he knows it was a mistake and feels a different sort of shame altogether.

2.

Eliot truly doesn't see the second first time coming at all.  It's a complete surprise, even as it's happening.  And that's probably why Eliot responds to it the way he does.  A little stunned, a little stupefied, a little dreamy, maybe.  Like he has to make it really count, has to make it as good as he can, because he doesn't know if he'll ever get to have this again, or if he does, if it will be another dozen months before the next time.

So when Quentin kisses him outside the cottage, all splayed out on the quilt over the mosaic, Eliot determines to take this as far as Quentin wants it to go, which turns out to be pretty far.

And Eliot can't deny how sweet, how earnest and true Quentin is when he leans in, sudden and quick and nervous, and presses the first brief kiss to Eliot's lips.  He can't deny how honest it is, and he couldn't stop the little smile from appearing on his own face if he tried, but he doesn't try, because just for this moment, he feels brave enough.  He returns the kiss and in seconds, Quentin is soft, pliable, beneath Eliot's mouth and his hands.

They stay out there, in the warm evening, listening to the murmur of various insects and small birds in the trees around them, kissing slow and sweet, like eating overripe fruit, for a while, until Quentin breaks away with the smallest gasp for air so it sort of sounds like he's choking when he says, "El --"

Dream broken, Eliot tells himself, Quentin has come down from whatever cloud he'd been riding and now he wants to be done, only -- only then Quentin takes Eliot's hand and drags it to his own body, presses Eliot's palm to the front of his pants, which have grown worn and faded over the past year, so Eliot can feel Q where he's straining beneath the fabric.  Aching, he thinks, a little delirious, he must be aching.

For a moment, he thinks maybe they should stop now.  Maybe they should take this slower.  But then comes the panicky thought that this may never happen again, and anyway, Q clearly doesn't want to stop, and they're a couple of twenty-somethings on a quest with too-small quarters and too much time on their hands, so what could anyone expect from them, really?

Eliot leads them inside, in part because it feels a little exposed out on the mosaic, and it's getting a little cold, but mostly because inside they can light the candles, and he wants to be able to see.  Quentin.  He wants to be able to see Quentin.

The cottage is small, and it only takes a moment for Eliot to light the few lamps and candles, and when he turns back to Quentin, it's to find him already settled on the edge of the bed, his shirt discarded somewhere on the floor, skin gold in the new light.  His eyes are open, turned up to Eliot, like he's just waiting, ready for whatever Eliot wants from him, nervous maybe, but also brave.  Eliot doesn't know why he ever thought Quentin wouldn't be.  He had been brave in the face of the Beast, brave in the face of the quest, why wouldn't he be now?

In that moment, what Eliot wants -- what he wants more than anything else -- is to give Quentin everything.

Everything he can.  Everything he knows, everything he's learned, and Eliot knows a lot.  He wants to give Quentin the best of all of it.  It consumes him, the need to do this.  To lay out all the best of what he has to offer and let Quentin pick through it with those long and gentle fingers.

Before he realizes what he's doing, Eliot is on the floor, kneeling between Quentin's spread legs.

Then they're kissing again, in the way that Eliot remembers from the last time, slow and deep and long.  Eliot feels himself being pulled up into it, and he thinks he might get lost there forever, but it hardly matters, he doesn't care at all.

Of course, Quentin cares.  He allows this to go on for several minutes though, before drawing Eliot's attention back to the reason they had come inside in the first place.  And it's not that Eliot isn't facing the same problem, more that he knows he's got lots of time left with his own dick, and isn't sure how much time he's got left with Quentin's.  So he seizes the moment.

It isn't lost on him, not for a second, that once again Quentin is completely undressed while Eliot has yet to lose a single article of clothing, and damn if that thought doesn't lead him straight past excited and on toward bordering desperation.  But he plays it cool, looks up at Quentin, puts his hot palms on Quentin's knees to push them further apart, and watches Quentin swallow as he does it.

The sound Quentin makes when Eliot finally puts his mouth on him can only be described as needy, and again comes that feeling, terrifying in its vastness: _I want to give you everything_.

Quentin does a good job holding on, his hands clenched tight in the bedsheets, brow furrowed, eyes closed.  Every once in a while, he lifts one hand to brush his fingers over Eliot's hair or his forehead or the shell of his ear.  Eliot takes it slow, letting the feeling guide him, letting the call-and-response of his body and Quentin's guide him, but making sure to employ the full range of his sizeable -- if he said so himself -- expertise.  The result is that Quentin sort of comes apart after a while, at times bent, curled over with the effort of hanging on, at times arched back, throat exposed, making those sweet little sounds Eliot remembers and never really thought he'd get to hear again.

Finally, a little giddy almost, though he does his best to hide it, Eliot pulls away.  Q's whole body moves with how hard he's breathing, and he drags his eyes up over Eliot's face, catching for a moment on what Eliot is sure are his swollen lips.  And Quentin surprises him again when he leans in for another kiss, this one open from the start, licking into his mouth, and it gives Eliot an idea.

He climbs up onto the bed, pushing Quentin back as he goes.  Quentin just follows, that same openly hungry expression on his face: pliant, willing, eager, desperate, but none of these sound like the compliments that they are in Eliot's head, so he doesn't say them.  Beautiful.  But he doesn't say that either, even though he knows, somehow, he knows that Quentin would have.

"Q," he says, "I want to try something.  Stop me whenever."

Quentin rolls his eyes but he's smiling in a way Eliot can't quite read.  "You're not gonna break me, El," he says, a little embarrassed, like he thinks Eliot is being ridiculous, like he's a little offended, like he likes this a little bit too.

Having this one moment of nerdy Q, defensive Q, Q ready to defend his own honor, lends just a touch of levity, brings Eliot back to himself a little bit, reminds him that this isn't a dream, that it's really Quentin beneath him on the bed, waiting for him to make a move.

Quentin's eyebrows rise.  "Seriously, Eliot, come on, just -- just do something, okay?"

And Eliot realizes he's smiling and that Quentin is getting squirrelly under the attention, so he drags himself as far down the bed as he can fit, and he puts his hands on the backs of Q's knees.  Then he pushes up, so Q's legs are out of his way, and Quentin must not realize what he's about to do, because when Eliot's tongue finds the tight little knot of him, he practically screams.  And then Eliot is licking him, working him, opening, and Q is shaking and breathing out short exhalations of, "El, El, God, fuck," before he seems to cease being capable of any speech at all.  At this point he drops one hand to the back of Eliot's head and just _rocks_ against his face for a moment or two, providing Eliot's third shock of the evening, and one that travels straight down to his own still-clothed cock, which for the most part, he isn't worrying about at all.

Quentin comes with Eliot's tongue in his ass and tears leaking from his tightly shut eyes.

An hour later, Quentin is lying on his front, hard again -- Eliot can tell because he's shifting against the mattress, canting his hips.  Eliot has three fingers inside him, and has for a while, pushing slowly, dragging rough fingertips against the place he knows is driving Quentin slowly to insanity, when Quentin tells him that he doesn't think anyone has ever been more ready, in any world or any timeline, and he's begging, absolutely begging, for Eliot's cock.  And so, finally, Eliot gives it to him.

3.

The third first time, the first time after Arielle dies, is born of desperation.  It happens too soon, but then, any time would have been too soon.  In fact, everything about how it happens is a little wrong, but Quentin finds that he likes the wrongness, because it would never have really felt right, so why not embrace it?

They're arguing, about the mosaic, about Teddy, about the coming winter and how they're going to manage without Arielle to help.  Really, they're mourning.  Grieving.  It hit them both harder than either of them would have guessed, the grief.  They still had each other, after all, and Teddy, and the nearby village had rallied for them, in the end, seeing how heartbroken they were over Arielle's illness.  They weren't alone.  But they were more alone than they had been before, and that mattered too.

Quentin misses her.  It would have been unbearable without Eliot.  Eliot who comforts him.  Eliot who grieves alongside him.  Some days, Eliot is inconsolable and Quentin is the one helping.  And then there are days like today, days when every little thing that happens seems wrong because Arielle isn't there to put her spin on it, to make it make sense, to make it all seem right or fair or good, or meaningful somehow.

On these days, Quentin is irritable, he knows.  He snaps more, and Eliot, right there with him in his anger and pain, snaps back.  They bicker and Arielle isn't there to turn it around, make it all lighthearted again.

Today, Teddy is playing with some friends in the village.  Their mother had offered to take him for a few hours, to give Quentin and Eliot some time and space alone.  They had accepted the help with gratitude, because managing grief and a young child is difficult work under the best of circumstances, but in the end, they didn't know what else to do with their time, so they had begun to work on the mosaic.

"No," Quentin says, snatching a green tile out of Eliot's hand and replacing it with a red.

"What difference does it make," Eliot mutters, just loud enough for Quentin to hear.

Quentin turns to look at him, his eyes on Eliot's back for several seconds before he says -- he can't help it, it just gurgles up out of him, like the tears did in all of those first few weeks -- "You know what?  You're right.  It doesn't," and he begins pulling up all the tiles they had spent the morning laying out.  He gathers them into his arms, and then he drops them, all in a heap, just outside the boundaries of the mosaic.

Eliot scrambles up, so when Quentin comes back for the rest, he's there, ready to grab Quentin's wrists in his hands to stop him.

He doesn't say anything though, just holds him there and looks into Quentin's face, like he understands exactly what Quentin is feeling, because he does understand.  And as soon as Quentin has this thought, he deflates.  He doesn't cry, he's not sure he can cry anymore, not yet.  But he does tip into Eliot's now-gentle, waiting arms, and Eliot strokes his hair, his hand on the back of Quentin's neck -- an absent gesture, one that he makes all the time for any number of reasons, but today it spreads a slow-moving warmth through Quentin's body.

Quentin tips his head back to look up at Eliot, and he can only guess what he looks like -- haggard, exhausted, heartbroken, a mess probably -- but Eliot looks down at him with the softest, most tender expression, like he would take away all of Quentin's pain if he could do it, and Quentin leans up onto his toes to kiss Eliot's mouth.

This coaxes the warmth from a moment before, and at first Quentin isn't sure Eliot feels it too, but then his grip on Quentin's neck tightens and Quentin knows he does.

They stay right there on the mosaic, not for the first time.  Quentin still feels -- _angry_ , but it's no longer directed toward Eliot.  Instead, it's transmuted into energy, a dark sort of power, and he wonders if Eliot can feel it, can recognize it in himself, when Quentin bites his lip and pushes him down against the mosaic, his hands quick on Eliot's clothes.

There's a ferocity to it, when Quentin presses into Eliot, and he can only hope that Eliot understands.  He seems to.  He digs his fingers into Quentin's thigh, and when Quentin touches his forehead to Eliot's as he moves over him, Eliot meets his eyes and they just breathe together as they rock, as though they're both saying _I'm here I'm here and I'm not going anywhere_.

It's overwhelming, being so close to another person again, so close to another person he loves, a person his whole body wakes up for, a feeling he only remembers having with Arielle, and Eliot, and maybe, maybe, Alice Quinn, once upon a time.

It's overwhelming, and yet he craves more of it, further proof of the reality of it, that Eliot is here, with him still, and that he isn't going to go away.  He presses harder, deeper, into and over him, braces his arm against Eliot's shoulders, across his chest, as though he can dig them both into the earth beneath the mosaic this way, just with the movement of his body and the force of his will.

And Eliot -- Eliot gets it.  He lifts his hips to meet Quentin turn-for-turn, and when Quentin bends down low to kiss him, Eliot's hand finds the back of Quentin's neck again, and that grip grounds him.  "El," he says, his mouth hovering only a breath away from Eliot's, so what when Eliot says --

"I know, Q, I know," Quentin feels it as much as hears it.

4.

The fourth first time, the last first time, Eliot is alone.  It's the first time after -- after everything.  After his life with Quentin in Fillory.  After returning home, home to the same place in a different time.

It's not right away, because Eliot can't stand it right away.  Every time his body starts to want -- something -- all he can see are Q's eyes, so sad and deep and brave, as Eliot tells him that they shouldn't, that he doesn't want, to try.  With Quentin.  Like they did before, or whatever, whenever, it was.

It's confusing, half like memory and half like a dream.  Experienced like memory, remembered like a dream.

And, like a dream, it comes back to Eliot in flashes now and again.  But what's not confusing, and what's burned into Eliot's memory fresh and real and bright, is that look in Q's eyes when Eliot told him no.  "Q, come on, I love you, but --" he had said.  And Quentin, sweet, soft, courageous Quentin, had just folded, as Eliot had known he would.

It was for the best, Eliot told himself.  He believed -- didn't he? -- what he had said in the throne room.  But that didn't make it any less painful, and he tried very hard not to think about it at all.

So, since it seemed to be the only thing he could think about any time he closed his damn eyes, it took Eliot a little while post-mosaic before he could even think about doing anything.  (Even longer than that before he could even think about doing anything with anybody _else_.)

Only -- only then one day, he's sitting in his room at the castle, and it's been a little while since he's seen Quentin at all, and when his eyes drift shut, for the first time, it isn't Quentin that day in the throne room that he sees.  Instead, one of those dream-like memories presents itself to him out of nowhere.  It's a memory of an ordinary day at the cottage, a few years into their life there.  Arielle is out doing errands with Teddy, giving Quentin and Eliot some time alone, as they all do for each other every once in a while, when they can, when they have the time and the emotional space.

In this memory, Quentin is just kissing him, slow and sweet like summertime and evening sunlight.  His mouth, open and hot on Eliot's, tastes like plums, and the peach in Eliot's own hand has been forgotten, so that when he reaches up to touch Quentin's face, he accidentally smears peach juice over his cheek.

They laugh, and Eliot puts the peach down on the bedside table before he leans up -- up because Quentin is straddling his lap, exactly as he had that first time, so many years ago -- and licks its sweet, sticky residue from Quentin's warm skin.

"Q," he says in the memory.  And that's all he says, because Quentin dips down to keep kissing him, and because his tone of voice says it all, because they've been saying it for years now, already, at this point.

And the memory -- because it's a memory of life and not a dream -- comes with sensation: Q's warm body hovering over his own, the peach juice on his tongue.  Now, here, in this timeline, Eliot's body responds to it, and when Eliot dares to wrap a hand around himself, he sees this Quentin, safe and secure and happy, his eyes all wrinkled at the corners as he laughs, confident and content in his position over Eliot as he kisses and kisses and kisses him, like he's been doing it forever, like he's maybe wanted, forever, to do it.

This is what Eliot is thinking as he comes over his belly, his own hand: that Quentin looks the most beautiful when he's happy like that, and when he's hopeful, committed, the way he was when he said, "Why the fuck not?"

Eliot sighs.  Cleans himself up quickly.  He has to find a drink.  Maybe that will put it all out of his head at last, finally convince him that he made the right decision.  Because to love like that --

He couldn't lose Quentin.  And this way, this way he gets to keep Quentin in his life, for good.  It would be different, but.

In this time, there is no Arielle, no little cottage, no mosaic to solve.  Nothing to bind them together, if they cross that line.  At least this way, they get to keep each other.  It's -- almost, probably, he has to believe -- it _is_ enough.


End file.
